NTID Offers Guidebook For Mainstream Teachers

A new publication offering ways to help college-level instructors support deaf students in mainly hearing classrooms is now available from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology.

Each of The Project Access Workshop Plannerís Guideís eight chapters can be offered as an individual workshop to help instructors and support service providers better understand the classroom challenges faced by deaf students and how to work most effectively with interpreters and captionists. It also offers lecture format ideas and presents exercises that simulate the experience of being deaf in a mainstream college environment.

Written by a team of support service providers, faculty members, deaf students, and researchers, this book is the final product from Project Access, a three-year grant program directed by NTID Department of Research and Teacher Education researchers Dr. Susan Foster and Dr. Gary Long. Educators can also visit a comprehensive, multi-media interactive Web site at http://www.rit.edu/classact where teachers can view and discuss many issues related to teaching deaf students in mainstream settings.

The guidebook and Web site offer a variety of easy-to-adapt ideas for changing teaching behaviors that impede deaf studentsí learning, such as instructors talking too fast, talking while facing the blackboard, or moving the laser pointer too quickly.

The Project Access Workshop Plannerís Guide and two CDs are available for $35 through BookSurge at http//:www.booksurge.com.

Project Access is funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education.

NTID is the first and largest technological college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. One of eight colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology, NTID offers educational programs and access and support services to 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live, and socialize with 14,400 undergraduate hearing students on RIT's Rochester, N.Y., campus.